Restoring part of the old Stowmarket Navigation

The River Gipping Trust are restoring part of the old Stowmarket Navigation to make it suitable for a small electric trip boat to ply for trade between Needham Market and Baylham on the River Gipping. Our current work revolves around a location called Pipps Ford which has an abandoned lock.

Part of the restoration work requires us to excavate the bed of the original river course which was filled in by the Environment Agency back in the 80's. That will allow us to divert the water flow from the lock whilst we see what needs to be done to that structure. We have constructed a new bridge over the river and the gabions have been placed next to the brick side walls of the bridge to protect the walls from scour once the river course has been opened.

When the EA blocked up the river course they laid several tonnes of concrete as a causeway and removed the original bridge. We have been breaking up that concrete and using it is a filler for the gabions.

We have never done this sort of work before but the instructions on the web site were very clear and we found it easy to put the gabions together using the wire supplied, which incidentally was ample for the job. Several bags of gravel were used to give us the correct batter and the finished article looks really good.

This bridge has been swept away by floodwater four times now and each time we have been able to retrieve the bridge downstream so with the help of your gabions it will not be going anywhere in the future.

"For years I have had the insides of an old jukebox sitting in my shed. I needed a metal mesh to finish things off and found exactly what I wanted at Fine Mesh Metals. Delivered in no time and here we have it. Shove in a 5p coin and rock on."